


Now Is the Time

by zeldadestry



Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: Community: 100_women, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-19
Updated: 2006-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:14:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"V?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Is the Time

**Author's Note:**

> prompt 017, 'Lust', for 100_women fanfic challenge

"V?" She closes the door behind her, locks it, puts her brown bag of groceries on the rickety kitchen table. Her coat, which is too thin for this cold, slips off and is hung on the back of the only chair at the table. From the inside pocket she pulls a slim package wrapped in butcher's paper and tied with shiny, thin red ribbon, like you'd use to tie a child's balloon. She holds it to her heart as she walks through her small flat. Her inspection is slow and everything is exactly as she left it and, as always, she is torn between disappointment and relief.

The groceries need to be put away and she leaves this new extension of her heart on the table beside her bed. Week by week the stacks of books grow taller. Years from now, they will rise from floor to ceiling, as they do in his home. The books are the walls, the foundation, they bear the load of the entire edifice. It's not true, she knows, but it's how it feels. How it feels. It feels lonely, doesn't it? Sometimes she makes her toast and egg in the morning just like he did, and like Gordon did. She cooks for herself and sets the table and then she leaves the room. She brushes her teeth, washes her face, and when she comes back to the kitchen, she pretends the food has just appeared, pretends she is sustained by someone else's hands, not only her own.

The food she buys herself now reveals her newfound frugality. Before, she fed herself as well as she could. Now, it is better to have the money for books. She buys what is filling and cheap, whole wheat bread (people will pay more for white bread even though it is less nutritious), potatoes, eggs and apples and tea. Everything is put away, everything is tidy. Sometimes she stands at the stove, remembers his damaged hands, remembers how he covered them, soon as she noticed, how he wished not to offend her, as though she would have felt anything but pity at the marks of his suffering. She stands at the stove and looks at her own hands, wonders if he could understand that she understands. Whatever they did to him, he remains whole. They could not break him.

Of course, some nights when she remembers him, he is nothing but broken. She seethes and hates him and promises herself she will grow her hair out. She will be beautiful again and she will forsake him and she will make him sorry for what he did. She battles herself, battles him, speaks out loud as though he will answer back. How could you do it? Sadist, you bloody sadist, you're not even human, you evil, evil thing! Yes, you monster. That's what I call you, that's what you are!

What a stupid girl she had been when she railed at him. What had she claimed as the greatest injustice? Not the torture, but the shearing. And he had said it hurt him to do it. It hurt him to break her, to strip her down. What did it mean to break to shudder naked or near enough on the cold stone floor until you died? What had he given her, after all? He gave you this. He gave you books and music and the understanding that you were not alive before. They took your parents and they took your brother and you died, too. You were what they wanted you to be. You cowered, you coward.

And now it is Thursday and this is what she does every other Thursday, she shaves her head again. She shaves her head to be naked. This is how she reminds herself that she will not hide. No mask, not now, not ever again. Runs her hands over her bare scalp and cries. No, not sadness. Tears of much more than sadness. God is in the rain, Valerie said. God is in her tears. Valerie. Valerie's love, transmitted to any, all, who read her story, shared her history. What would have happened to him if not for her, his captive sister, forsaken to die, yes, but living, still. Living, now, in Evy's tears, tears she cries for Valerie for each and all who have been captured, destroyed.

He hurt her not to hurt her, but in the service of liberation. She knows it, even in those hours when she plots his death. As though she could ever hurt him. Stupid. Stupid. No, he's safe from her, not because he is strong or quick or brutal in the attack, but because she knows what would hurt him most. To try to hurt his body would only be a symbol. It would only mean that she wished to hurt him as he had hurt her, and he would sacrifice himself for this, wouldn't he? If that was the proof she demanded, would he or would he not leave himself vulnerable to her blows?

What does she know? She knows everything, she knows nothing, it's with her in one hour and gone the next, not the ideas, the ideas are constant, but how she feels about them. Whether or not she believes.

How she feels about him, lies in her bed and now is the time, now is when she cuts open the package, runs the scissors up the seam and the paper splits and falls to the floor, pale as her skin surrounding the artery of the ribbon. She just stares at it, the small book in her hand, this new piece of her soul. Piece of her mother's soul, piece of his, roams through until she finds those words he spoke to her, once, traces her fingers across the page, as though in touching the words, she touches him. Closes her eyes and reaches for the light. The room is dark, she mouths the words into the blindness. If he is watching he will see and know.

_I dare do all that may become a man;  
Who dares do more is none._

She is falling into sleep. She thinks she feels the book slip from her hand, thinks she hears its thud against the floorboards.

She dreams that he is with her. He picks up the book and places it with the others and he must know how difficult they are to obtain, how much she risks to find them and then to keep them with her. He must understand, he would understand, for it matters as much to him. She dreams he sits beside her, watches her sleep, and she can see it all, feel it all, as though she's in her body, as though she's also floating above. He rests his hand against her cheek and she turns into the touch, nuzzles her lips against the cold leather of his gloves. Let me feel your skin, she whispers, will you, please? He does not answer, draws his hand away from her, and she grabs at his wrist, captures him, brings him back to her mouth and presses a kiss into his palm.

For me?

For you. Keep it. Keep it always.

Always.

In a dream she does not need to speak in a dream he hears her words as she feels them, not as she says them.

In her dreams she does not speak, but he always does. More than anything, even his music, she misses his voice.


End file.
